WHO advises on monkeypox: Decision on emergency of international concern

Created: 06/23/2022, 17:37

The monkeypox virus is spreading.

The WHO checks whether a public health emergency is called.

Pictured: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization.

© Salvatore Di Nolfi/dpa

The WHO has assembled a panel of experts to assess the danger posed by the monkeypox virus.

It is also about an “emergency of international concern”.

Geneva - The World Health Organization (WHO) has been criticized several times in the past for reacting too late to threats.

Not only when the coronavirus spread in early 2020.

Even when Ebola broke out in West Africa in 2013 and the WHO only initiated emergency measures in 2014 - more than 11,000 people died.

Now the special agency of the United Nations has taken up the cause of reacting in good time.

An expert panel of monkeypox specialists has been meeting in Geneva since Thursday (June 23).

A decision will soon be made as to whether the WHO will declare an “emergency of international concern” due to the unusual spread of the virus.

Monkeypox cases: The disease is now so widespread

At the beginning of June there were 30 monkeypox cases in Germany, and 520 infected people are currently reported in 14 federal states.

There are now 2746 cases in 29 countries across Europe.

1,799 cases were reported to the European monitoring system Tessy, 1,796 of which were confirmed by laboratories, the EU health authority ECDC and the Regional Office Europe of the World Health Organization (WHO) report in a joint analysis of the monkeypox outbreak.

Mainly men are affected, the majority of sufferers (44 percent) are in the age group between 31 and 40 years.

In general, anyone who has close physical contact with an infected person can become infected.

Cases are known from more than 40 countries worldwide.

On Wednesday there were already more than 5,000 infected people, 3,308 of them outside of Africa, according to the US health authority CDC.

Monkeypox: history, contagion, spread, symptoms, vaccination protection

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Monkeypox: what speaks for an "emergency of international concern"?

Caution is always required with pathogens if they are either new - like the SARS-Cov-2 virus at the beginning of the corona pandemic, or if they are new - like the monkeypox virus, explains the scientist Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim in her video "Monkeypox is spreading".

The monkeypox virus has been known for over 50 years and was first detected in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The disease is actually common in rodents, which can also transmit the pathogen to humans or monkeys.

Outside of West and Central African countries - where the disease is endemic - the virus has so far only been found very occasionally.

But now more and more countries are reporting monkeypox infections.

98 percent of the cases were discovered in countries where the virus was previously virtually unknown.

This is worrying for the WHO, said the specialist Ibrahima Socé Fall at the convening of the committee.

The fact that the virus is also spreading in Europe and other parts of the world is new.

As well as the fact that the transmission is exclusively from person to person.

The special thing about the current cases is that those infected with monkeypox in Germany had not previously traveled to countries in Africa, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

This unusual behavior of the virus would speak for an "emergency of international concern".

Monkeypox emergency of international concern?

That speaks against it

On the other hand, the number of infections – unlike, for example, with the corona virus – is not increasing explosively.

One factor is the transmission path.

While Corona is also transmitted through aerosols, according to current knowledge, the monkeypox virus is only transmitted through close human contact.

In addition, it is a DNA and not an RNA virus, which is why the monkeypox pathogen does not mutate so quickly.

It is therefore not expected that more and more contagious variants will emerge in a short time.

The course of monkeypox disease is also usually mild, and there are currently no known deaths in Europe.

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State of emergency "inevitable"

Hardly anyone in Germany is vaccinated against smallpox, because the WHO declared this disease eradicated in 1980 thanks to a global vaccination campaign.

However, a smallpox vaccine that is also effective against monkeypox is already available in Germany.

From an expert perspective, there is currently no reason to believe that monkeypox could develop into a new pandemic like the coronavirus.

"The disease is well known, it spreads more slowly and can only be transmitted through close physical contact, and we have vaccinations and medication," explains Nguyen-Kim.

WHO's monkeypox decision: when will it be made by the panel of experts?

The World Health Organization's Monkeypox Emergency Panel is made up of around a dozen independent scientists from around the world who are particularly knowledgeable about the monkeypox virus.

The WHO did not initially say who was appointed to the committee.

The experts review previous evidence and the risk of a larger threat, and formulate recommendations for public health authorities.

The consultations started on Thursday (June 23) at 12 noon via video link and are also intended to answer the question of whether public health is threatened on a larger scale.

Then they would recommend declaring an “emergency of international concern”.

The result of the deliberations of the Expert Council should be known on Friday (June 24th) at the earliest, but it could take even longer.

"The committee is expected to issue a communication in the coming days," the WHO said on Thursday.

An “emergency of international scope” would have no practical consequences.

Rather, this measure is intended to wake up countries to look out for cases and take their own precautions to curb the spread.

Fortunately, monkeypox seems harmless compared to the corona virus, but that should not make you feel safe.

The Global Virome Project, a research initiative aiming to combat future pandemics, warns of around 500,000 undiscovered zoonotic viruses transmitting from animals to humans.

Some can be harmless, but others can be worse than Corona, explains expert Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim, adding: "It's Russian roulette, you can always be unlucky.

But as we humans drive climate change forward, destroy habitats, hunt wild animals, keep livestock in the smallest of spaces, we turn the revolver drum faster and faster and downright challenge bad luck."